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TCPALaw writes "ccAdvertising, a company purported to have 'a long, long, long history of pumping spam out of every telecommunications orifice, and even boasting of voter suppression' has asked the FCC to declare spam filters illegal. Citing Free Speech rights, the company claims wireless carriers should be prohibited from employing spam filters that might block ccAdvertising's political spam. Without stating it explicitly, the filing implies that network neutrality must apply to spam, so the FCC must therefore prohibit spam filters (unless political spam is whitelisted). In an earlier filing, the company suggests it is proper that recipients 'bear some cost' of unsolicited political speech sent to their cell phones. The public can file comments with the FCC on ccAdvertising's filing online."

I wish the above AC would get an account, because "the right to free speech is the right to not have your speech curtailed by the government." was insightful, but nobody will see it.

The right to free speech isn't the right to stand in front of my house with a bullhorn. The right to swing your fist stops before my nose begins. I have every right to use spam filters. This sleazy lawsuit is just another indication that some people have absolutely ZERO ethics, let alone morals.

While this is true nowhere in the constitution does it say "You have to pay for my right to speak" but that is EXACTLY what this company is proposing, because bandwidth has a cost and those costs are passed onto consumers.

So if they want to send spam? Fine, send 'em a bill for every piece of spam they send. They are allowed to speak, sure, but the free speech laws are all about the government not blocking your right to speak NOT giving a free medium for you to speak in. You are allowed to hold up a sign on a street corner professing your belief on this or that issue but you do NOT have the right to demand free access to an auditorium owned by a private company just to air your rants and that is what these guys are basically trying to get, everyone else to bear the costs of their bullshit.

The traditional way this is stated is this:Freedom of the press means that anyone who owns a press can use it to print whatever opinions he likes. It does *not* mean that somebody _else_ has to print whatever _you_ want on _their_ press.

If you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, who decides whether to print it or not? Presumably, traditionally, it was the editor. If you write a comment on a blog, who decides whether it gets published or not? The people who run the blog are the first li

AFAIK the US Law does not state any such thing. That therefore must mean you do not have any such right, and are obliged to listen to whatever anyone has to say./sarcasm

(Sarcasm tag aside...) for a private person: what is not prohibited by law it is permitted. Thus, one doesn't need to have a law granting a right to enjoy it (for govts is the other way around: what is not specificity allowed by a law, it is supposed to be prohibited).

Filters don't stop his free speech. He can still speak. We have the right to filter him out and listen to only that speech we want. He has no right to force us to listen to his speech. That's what he's asking of the government.

Filters don't stop his free speech. He can still speak. We have the right to filter him out and listen to only that speech we want.

WE have that right... but should the carriers? Back in the day of dial-up internet access, I'd argue that all those ISP's had the right to provide spam filtering services for their users. Users could easily go somewhere else if they wanted. I'm not so sure now, since there's only a handful of choices for high speed access.

At some point, it hits common carrier level. If the NAP's were fighting to put content filtering in the NAP's (network access points, like MAE East, MAE West, Sprint NAP, Ameritech NAP (c

Actually the request is not to ban spam filters, it is to ban carriers from applying filters which filter out speech the carrier chooses. This is not a request to prohibit individuals, or carriers on the behalf of individuals, from filtering out speech which the individual does not wish to receive. Blocking spam by the carrier of the carriers choice, is equivalent to blocking phone calls from a specific number by the carriers choice, which they are regulated not to be able to.

I hate spam texts as much as anyone else, but the argument being made in the filing is sound. The filling is not saying that you have to read or even receive his speech, only that the common carrier can not block his speech without your explicit request.

Like watching the Quartlow brothers add 10W30 when you said 30HD. You point it out, and they say "Is equeevalent.'

--

I spam you. You spam me. We're a dysfunctional family.

More like your car comes back from a service with adverts all over it. You complain and they say "don't try to infringe my freedom of speech". Then you notice that the cost of the adverts has been added to your service bill. They say "it is proper that recipients 'bear some cost' of unsolicited adverts".

More like your car comes back from a service with adverts all over it. You complain and they say "don't try to infringe my freedom of speech". Then you notice that the cost of the adverts has been added to your service bill. They say "it is proper that recipients 'bear some cost' of unsolicited adverts".

Attempts to remove the adverts cause the car to be disfigured and some even cause holes in the body. The warranty is voided and your insurance goes up as a commercial vehicle. The neighbors sue to have the junk removed, and the wife leaves for a used car salesman with ED pills.

I guess this guy should be educated on what "free speech" is and what "net neutrality" means. In fact, because of the when-in-Rome thingy, I propose to communicate it comprehensibly, in terms those people understand, i.e., *everyone* should write them an e-mail on that matter.

See, there you go with actually reading the First Amendment. It's so much easier to just yell "FREE SPEECH" at the top of your lungs when there is the slightest tangental reference to censorship happening, public or private.

The simplest solution is to prosecute phone, computer, and fax spam under the existing federal law of USCC Section 18, paragraph 2701. The law applies to "unlawful stored communications", and it's only deliberate regulatory cooperation with bulk advertisers that have prevented applying it to email and phone spam.

Under that law, a first offense of spam for commercial gain is punishable by 5 years in jail. Second offense, 10 years.

Q&A # 28*****"If I register my number on the National Do Not Call Registry, will it stop all telemarketing calls?

No. Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most telemarketing calls, but not all. Because of limitations in the jurisdiction of the FTC and FCC, calls from or on behalf of political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors would still be permitted, as would calls from companies with which you have an existing business relationship, or those to whom you’ve provided express agreement in writing to receive their calls. However, if you ask a company with which you have an existing business relationship to place your number on its own do-not-call list, it must honor your request. You should keep a record of the date you make the request."*****

No, they want to make it illegal for the phone company to block the call from ever going through.

Do you really want your phone company deciding who can and cannot call you?

Ideally, I'd want some analog to Sieve and RFC 5804 for SMS and phone calls so that I can decided who can and cannot call me before they hit my handset.

Architecturally, it is more desirable to terminate the spammers at a point that lies inside Team Telco's systems(even on smartphones that have the power for PC-level client side filtering, you've still burned the spectrum and battery power to receive the message before you delete it, and not all phones are nearly that punchy); but you certainly wouldn't want

Do you really want your phone company deciding who can and cannot call you?

While I generally loath spammers, I think this is the point that makes the net neutrality argument valid
I am continually frustrated by my ISPs spam blocking. There is no opt out, I can't white list senders, and they won't disclose fully how they identify what is and is not spam.

There have been several instances where senders emails to me simply disappeared with no indication to me or the sender that the message was discarded. I feel that my email is often too important to have my ISP arbitrarily discarding it in this manner.

While I appreciate that my ISP is marketing this to me as a "feature" and they are somehow doing me a favor, the reality is they are just trying to lower their costs by mitigating spam and the burden it places on their servers and network.

My preference would be for them to not block my spam for me, or at least give me a way to opt out of their blocking and let me manage it myself so I can have a stronger sense of confidence that messages sent to me are arriving as intended.

Thus, while I don't agree that SPAM should be allowed, I do agree that allowing ISPs to block it should be disallowed.

I use Google Voice for my main phone number and their phone-spam-filter capability is a selling point to me. I can see the numbers that called me, but they don't actually ring my phone if they're telephone spammers.

No, it's Schmuck. A literal translation of schmuck is "penis" but it's considered an especially vulgar term and has come to mean an "obnoxious, contemptible or detestable person, or one who is stupid or foolish." (Wikipedia)

This sounds reasonable to me - the telephone company has no business filtering phone calls, so it should not filter text messages either. Subscribers may choose to employ a spam-blocking service, which could be provided by other people than the phone company.

and together with this we should also change the following.If you receive unsolicited and unwanted email, the sender is criminally liable for e.g. stalking. If a company is the sender, tha liabilty is transferred to the CEO, the entire board of directors and all shareholders.

Actually GP has a point. The service provider has no right to filter anything, as long as it was properly payed for. The receiving end has all the right to filter any way they like. If they don't like the word purple, let them filter all messages that contain the word purple.

the problem is it WASNT properly paid for. Messages I recieve I have to pay for. I didnt agree to recieve the spam, I didnt agree to spend my money on recieving it, therefore, screw the spammer. It's like sending ad spam to fax machines and costing companies money via fax paper.

So what you're saying is that you pay to receive a text message? Even though you can't really choose whether or not you want to receive a particular message? That's absurd. With phone calls, you don't pay until you answer, if you pay at all for incoming calls. However with Text Messages, since there's no option to "not answer" it should be illegal for them to charge you for incoming texts. Otherwise they could rack up your bill by turning off the spam filter for a little while, or letting it run with loose

Why do I see this as a chance for the service provider to stick it to us again? "Oh you want 'SPAM' messages filtered out? Yeah, that will be an additional $9.99 per month." Then they will try to find a way to block 3rd party apps from blocking SPAM so you have to use their service or root/jailbreak your phone to avoid unsolicited messages.

Yeah but filtering at the end means networks clogged up with spam being transmitted. If they want to play with loopholes then ISPs can respond by assuming the conceit that consumers are leasing time on their servers and running their own spam filtering code (nicely picked from the one available option they provide).

THIS!

My first naive assessment of net-neutrality was that ISPs had every right to charge companies for using bandwidth on their networks, and I wouldn't want to support some overbearing legislation despite the fact it might negatively affect how I use the internet. But after just a little thought, I realized I am the customer - not google, not netflix - I'm the customer and I'm already paying and I'm choosing how to use my paid-for bandwidth, so became a supporter or net neutrality, but it's not netflix using the bandwidth, it's me.

In this case, though, it's pretty obvious it's the spammers are using the bandwidth, not the the customers of the service providers. The difference is between pushing and pulling content - if I pull it, I'm the one using it - if they push it, they are the ones using it unless I told them I want them to push content to me.

If anyone in the legal system has a brain, this guy trying to get net neutrality to work for spam will crash and burn relatively easily.

> So should we remove all spam filters from e-mail, because spammers have the right of free speech

I'm not sure that is quite what the troll is claiming, rather that ISPs should not filter the emails. You have the right not to listen (i.e. set up(1)) any spam filter you want. However the spammer has the free speech right to not be impeded in spamming the crap out of you(2) by the ISP as the ISP should not take any note of the content coming in, but just deliver it all equally.

Do ISPs really filter out the mails? All that gmail does for me is put some stuff in the inbox, and some other suff in the spam folder. Nothing is filtered out. I can read spam all day if I want to, it's just in its own cozy folder. Doesn't seem like a lot of free speech curtailment if you ask me.

This sounds reasonable to me - the telephone company has no business filtering phone calls, so it should not filter text messages either.

Bullshit. The phone company should most definitely filter both calls and text messages if the customer requests it. If I don't want to receive any calls by 555-1234567 because they are from some sicko who breathes at me in the middle of the night, the phone company should block the calls when I ask them to. And if I don't want to receive any spam messages, and my phone company offers a spam filter, and I ask them to please use it on my number, then yes, please!

What you mean is that they should not do it without asking their customers. But the alternative is not to not do it, the alternative is asking the customers.

Subscribers may choose to employ a spam-blocking service, which could be provided by other people

For example, the phone company. Why not? They are in the best position.

Where I live, the sender pays for text messages. Problem solved. I don't get any spam.

Here in Brazil the sender pays, but I still receive spam. It so happens that the phone company can partner with a spammer so that he pays much, much less for sending spam SMS than normal people do. At least they make the official spammers offer an opt-out, but any time a new company signs up with them, I start receiving brand new spam. ~sigh~

I work for a large Japanese corporation with >150K employees, they sell indirect access to our corporate in-boxes to spammers. They call it a "social club" and advertisers offer specials "exclusive to company X employees", they are broadcast by HR once or twice a week and tailored to fit the geographical location. Personally I don't mind being paid to delete spam.

The only time I pay for receiving calls / SMS is if I am roaming internationally. Why anyone would sign up for a service where they pay when someone wants to call / text them *even if they don't want the communication* is beyond me. You want to send me stuff? You pay for it. All of it.

Here's the difference though: you can only receive one phone call at a time - everyone else gets a busy signal. Thus, the technology acts as a spam filter already. You can take the phone off the hook, or dial out and no incoming calls get through (without something like call waiting).

With email or text messages, you can receive hundreds of thousands simultaneously, and there is nothing you can do about it until it's already been accepted and working against your mailbox size limit (and bandwidth limit), unless the carrier does something about it before you see it. And it's not one person dialing another person, it's one person hitting a button and millions of messages are sent to millions of people.

If there was something along the lines of a Do Not Call list that had legal teeth, then that would be one thing, but there's not. Also, there's nothing to prevent offshore operations from spamming the crap out of people, because there's no prohibitive international calling fees.

The "voter suppression" was a series of text messages that many would find offensive, but whether they were intended to suppress votes or to convince people to vote differently is a matter of interpretation.

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.(X) No one will be able to find the guy(X) The police will not put up with it (specifically, murder is still illegal however justified it might be)

Killing is a barbaric punishment. I propose having them delete junk mail all day long for the a few years. If they don't behave, a bit of solitary confinement, sorting important message though an inadequate spam filter should do the trick.

I heard this before back in the late 90's when I a customer called up and asked why he couldn't connect. I told him "Sir you're account has been disabled for spamming". He new darn good and well he was spamming, oh but he denied it, and in frustration claimed freedom of speech. Good luck with that governments can deny speech we're not the government. Boy was he upset. Fun times. Sad these days spammers don't seem to get burned so easily unless they are dragged into court by someone big company...

So business is petitioning the government to make a law that the people do not want... seems like we've been here before, and business normally wins. Okay I don't know about "normally wins" but it's certainly happened before. At least with DMCA while I don't agree with the motivations behind it it's at least an order of magnitude more rational than this.

No, this is a thief trying to get the government to businesses to allow him to steal the use of their equipment and services. The carriers don't want spammers any more than you do, because the spammers irritate their customers and waste their resources.

I pay per text that I receive. I am pretty certain that my carrier is more than happy to allow these to come through. I even tried to use a partial blocking application ( not just all texts ) but that apparently was preventing the texts from being read, but not received. I was still being charged for every spam that I didnt see.

I would like an ability to send the text back to my cell provider. Every text that comes back to them does not charge my account. They can look to see that I am not sending them back

I would like an ability to send the text back to my cell provider. Every text that comes back to them does not charge my account. They can look to see that I am not sending them back legitimate texts. This way, it will cost them plenty for allowing texts, and they can actually provide a service for their million percent markup, and I wont have t o pay for this crap

For Verizon/T-Mobile/AT&T:Forward the offending text message to the short code 7726 (SPAM)They'll shoot you back a message which you must reply to.

And you should always call your telco and dispute bad billings.They almost always forgive small stuff without a big fight.

Spamming is not, and has never been a free speech issue. It's a property rights issue. The spammer's right to free speech does not create a duty for anyone else to allow him to use their privately-owned equipment to send the spam. If the greasy little bastard wants to advertise, then he should buy ad space like any legitimate business would.

I believe I have an important message to express in the form of punching advertisers in the nose. I believe this is a freedom of speech issue and it should not be suppressed. And if there are medical costs, I believe the recipient should be responsible for them.

"I have a right to free speech and so everyone should be forced to read my speech. Modding me to -1 hides my post and thus infringes my free speech rights. Thus, I insist that Slashdot moderators automatically mod my comments to +5 or I'll sue!"

Contact their ccAdvertising's clients. Don't be offensive or do something silly. Maybe a letter or email each week, explaining why associating with that company is a shitty idea. Might work on corporations. Probably wont work on the political clients, who by and large wont give a shit unless it's going to affect their re-election.

While that is true, such legislation would impact all of those sending spam, not just ccAdvertising. Further, last I checked, there are plenty of people outside of the US spamming individuals inside the US, which would necessitate some sort of legal recourse.

This is America, you communist. Last I checked we don't bother with 'legal recourse' if foreigners annoy us enough.(And, honestly, in terms of US quality of life, having the CIA dedicate the secret torture dungeons and assassin robots currently used on 'terrorists' to the war on spammers would probably be an improvement...)

The US advertising industry could learn a lot from other countries, that's for sure.... take drug ads, for example. In Canada, it's illegal to mention both the drug name, and what it does in the same ad. One or the other. That's led to some very funny ads [youtube.com].

Have you not heard of fax modems? (and if you have, welcome to the 90's!). I've routinely faxed Windows Printer Test Pages because it's the most convenient thing to send to test the fax, with modern network->fax system, I wouldn't mess around with bits of paper and fax machines (what are those?! Welcome back to the 80's!)

All you'd do would be to tie up their phone lines a bit until they blacklisted the numbers on their internal switchboard (which might even happen automatically wit